


Like Flames that Shatter Night

by gudhvinr



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Abstract, Dream Sex, Empath, First Time, Gay Sex, Healing Sex, Human Cole, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Original Character(s), POV First Person, Present Tense, Prose Poem, Spirit World, Spiritual, Strangers, Stream of Consciousness, The Fade
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-01 09:31:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2768201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gudhvinr/pseuds/gudhvinr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chapter 1: "I am truly Cole now, misery and memory have nailed me to myself and make me whole. I still hear the hurts and help to heal them, but now I belong to this world and it to me, and my heart is here, not far away. Varric tells me to tell, for stories can be a shackle that unbinds us. I will tell you what I see."</p><p>Chapter 2: "Enasal my name, and my beloved is called Cole. I have fared the forgotten roads and found him in the heart of an unstained land. We are each a lamp unto the other." O night that was my guide, O night more lovely than the dawn, O night that joined the lover to the beloved one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I conceived of this as happening well after the events of the main storyline in Inquisition, after the Inquisitor had chosen Varric's option in Cole's personal quest. As such, I imagine Cole as having less of a "childish" quality to him; rather, he'd be like a late adolescent (18, 19), and thus I would not consider the following to be about an underage character even though Cole is so often called "kid" or "a boy" by the companions during the events of Inquisition.

Belonging bestowed upon me, the verdant earth remembers and the eyes of strangers linger. An orphan no more, but now a newfound son and brother.

A gust against my face, freezing, and a flipping brim soaring, snatched, Varric grinning: "You can spend one day without it, kid. Besides, you've got nice hair! Everyone loves a blond." But that isn't true. Lots of people don't like Sera. Still, he's right. People know me now, my name, my face ( _Poor lad must be starved from the war. How the young ones suffer. I should set a cake aside for him_ ). I ate it, it made _her_ happy to help _me_ , there was lemon balm and wild honey.

These days, the Fade is farther, the rifts shut, the Veil like a fog and not a curtain, but I feel them: the little wisps of Hope that hover by the gardens; the silent smith of Fortitude that Dorian found in the foundry; a girl-ghost that sings in the chantry, her sorrow turned to light. Braan let them stay, remembering ( _it is what Hahren Solas would have wanted me to do_ ). They brush against me, whispers words of kindness: "You are great among us, a timeless wish incarnate, our chance to reach into the hearts of mortals, not to inhabit them but to know them."

I don't know if they're right. I'm just Cole now, human. Real. Someone calls Varric. "I'll catch you later, kid. Go mingle, you'll be fine!" I smile in spite of myself: the eyes from curious corners make me a little nervous, still, but I'll try. I owe it to Rhys, and to Braan, and to all my friends. Their love around me, ties that bind without burning, hands that hold me here, help me learn.

The sun is low and winter-dimmed, and a shape is framed by all its light, up on the walls. I climb. Eyes that fork lightning, the Fade hums around the newcomer, a Dalish mage, and shards of being reach, skim like dragonflies over a pond, fall back beyond the Veil. He's young, only a year or two more than what I seem to be--or is it am, now? The marks cut deep across his cheeks, antlers for Andruil. His pride at manhood new-won is already gone. "Shem. How goes it?" he half-murmurs. He doesn't trust my ears.

They found him, too sick to scream, wounds oozing, hateful human hands burned into his memory, alongside the clan that lost him. "I am well. Varric took my hat. He says I should find new people and talk to them." I shiver.

Eyes of seawater slide sideways. "Where's your coat? It'll be dark soon."

"I... don't know." Cold is still new, and so is heat: a language for blood and skin to master now. "I forgot it again."

His narrow lips slacken: pity, but pain as well ( _"Mythal, this one must be touched. He is far away from himself." Then memory, screams and reeking mud, a boot on my neck, drowning:_ "Knife-ear witch! Knife-ear witch!"). The hardness returns; his eyes don't move. "You'll get the cold in your lungs, standing out here with no furs," he says, louder this time.

Braan wiped the pus, fought the fever with careful doses, sang Dale-songs when the sick one woke at times. He knows Braan trusts me, so he doesn't use cold or cutting words. "My name is Cole," I say. I hold out my hand, like Varric taught me. It's very cold without gloves. He goes still.

( _"No I am not one of them"_ ) "That is a human peasant's greeting," stiffly said, his words over-crisp as unripe apples, and as sour. "But my name, it's Enasal." His hair is golden in strands across his face, and the sunset turns it to threads of flame.

My hand hangs there, growing numb. He looks at it. I smile, though my eyes are wind-stinging. "Glad to meet you," I say. I hope I've made a friend.

Silence.

Then, "Are you mad? You could lose your fingers, they're already going off-color!" I look. Yes, they do seem a strange red now, skin biting against itself.

 "Oh. I don't know how this works."

"Don't kn--what is _wrong_ with you, shem?"

I cock my head, considering. "Here is different. The Fade doesn't make cold or hot. It used to be that I didn’t have to move in line with these things, but my body is more complete now, so the cold is real for me the way I’m real for it. This feeling is new. It hurts."

Eyes wide. "The Fade? You are... Hahren Lavellan said something of an _elgar_. He meant you?"

"Yes. I was a spirit. Solas kept telling me that. He wanted me to turn back into what I was outside of time, because he feared that I wouldn’t be able to bear sadness or regret. I don’t think he was all wrong, for the first months were... were _hard_ , every moment of them. But that all meant that right from the start I was becoming real, and Solas said he had never seen such a thing before, and did not know what it meant. He wanted to help, but he only saw one where Varric sees many. I think I am human now in truth. Varric showed me how to remember things." My voice warbles as flesh knots against itself, cold squeezing down into bone.

His jaw relaxing, he puts his fur-gloved hands around mine. Like mice, they tremble and jump but are softly warm. He fears me, and laments ( _lost as I am lost, but ancient and alien, a being as old as the Creators wearing the shape of a lad: he needs to be helped though, doesn’t he?_ ). " _Ir abelas_ , child of the Beyond. Hahren Lavellan told me you were a kindly _elgar_ , that I should treat you well."

"Braan is gentle. He worries about me." Heat returning, but it hurts, strange knives cutting into nerve. "Maybe I should go back inside. Varric could find me a warm place."

( _No shelter, hiding beneath the roots of trees, shemlen walk these woods, they will find me_ ) "No, I’ll take you to my room, it’s closer," he replies, and he takes off his coat, puts it around my shoulders. It radiates heat over my shoulders and chest, from him, and all over my body the little hurts start going away, muscles loosening.

"People always want to give me things now that they see me," I say as we go down the steps and hug close to the walls to stay out of the wind. "I've always been giving, receiving is... new. I have to remember it, remind myself. Every time someone gives me something, I become a little more real, I think. Thank you. For remembering me. It makes it easier."

He says nothing ( _"The Beyond is without limit or fathom and its nature is as mutable as the soul, trackless. Though many see demons, that is not all that one can find there, da'len. One can find spirits of Revelation or of Patience just as one can find demons of Desire or of Sloth." What is he?_ ).

So I say, “Solas thought that I was a spirit of Compassion. I’m still Compassion, or he is a part of me, but a spirit was only the seed of who I am. Now I’m sprouting into something different, and other things grow out of who I was that I didn’t understand before."

“Why are you telling me all of this, Cole?” Asked from the side of his mouth as he winces in the wind. “We’ve only just met, and I’m still a stranger to your Inquisition.”

“Not mine, ours. Braan took care of you, sort of like how he takes care of me. You belong as much as I do.” I see Enasal flinch ( _“We are the walkers of the lonely path”_ ) but I go on. “I’m telling you because you’re like I was. Lost. Sometimes I forget how to talk to people, but if you hear what I say, it could help. It’s who--It’s what I do. I help.” Silence again.

Past the door, and Enasal slams it shut behind us. Still cold in this hall, but no wind. My hands are hurting again, but I don’t know what to do. Enasal takes hold of them and puts them in my armpits. It’s warm. “Thank you.” He looks at me and I can’t tell what’s in his face, and I don’t hear his heart’s hum of hurt in my head, so I just smile again. Varric said that I look better when I smile. Dorian, too. Enasal doesn’t smile, even though Braan told me that the _vallaslin_ doesn’t hurt after a moon. It’s like Enasal forgot his smiles right when I’m just starting to learn.

I follow him through echoing stone, there are torches here and there and guards upon their rounds. I feel the whispers of their old hurts ( _Denerim burns with darkspawn fire_ ) ( _“Promise me, Ned”_ ) but then we pass them and I am within myself again, not out there. He leads me down, and to the right. There is a door, and past it…

 _Warm_. A fire in the hearth burning well before we got here, for Braan taught me that in winter the Dalish keep the fire burning always, to lose it would be a sin. Enasal tugs off the fur hat on his head, and now the strands of hair that were in his face before are rejoined with their friends, down past his ears, shimmering bright as feathers in the firelight.

He puts a hand on my shoulder, guides me towards the fire, pulls my hands out and spreads them out in front of the flame. He’s cold too, I can see it in the hunching shape of his body. I lift the coat from my body and pull in close to him, putting its weight over his right shoulder and my left. “There. Now we’re both warm.”

He looks at me, and smiles for the first time. “Creators, you really are from the Beyond, aren’t you?” It’s a strange smile, hooked from angles that I can’t quite remember ( _strayed from the ways of the People_ ).

I don’t know what he means. “Yes… Is that a problem?” He’s hurting but from a different side than he was before. The color is something that I’ve seen before in my friends, in Cassandra and in Braan before they said yes to each other. I don’t know what it means. I think I’ve felt it since I became real. What was its name?

“Here. This will keep us warmer.” His breath hitches, and he draws closer, pulls the coat and his arms around me. My hands are warmer now, but there’s still cold around him, in him ( _my body lashed against the tree, my eyes thrown back to sunlight that is_ murderously _indifferent as I retch, the world aflame with agony_ ) and I can’t, suddenly our bodies are against each other and ( _“By my authority as Keeper do I banish you.”_ ) it’s too close his heart is loud ( _the shemlen scream and curse me for a witch, brandishing dead children’s bodies as thorns bite deep into my back_ ) I stumble back suddenly seizing flailing it’s too real please Rhys help me ( _raving weeping shrieking as my eyes suddenly see the Beyond, the great Breach burning, spirits gone mad_ , let me die)  
  
My body prickles, sweat dripping down my forehead, my arms, itching, tickling. “I’m Cole,” I say. I’m lying down. Remember, remind, it would be remiss to let go of Varric’s lessons. “Help the hurt… hear their hearts…”

I should be on the ground, though. I fell… but I’m on Enasal’s bed, and he’s sitting apart from me, staring ( _I hurt him, our souls are too many-faced for the_ elgaran _to bear us, that’s what the Keeper said, shame on me_ ) “Stop. It isn’t your fault.” I push against the pillow, sit up slightly, look at him. “I hear. That is who I am. I am the one that hears when there is no one left by your side. It was just… loud.”

He sits there. I watch him, instead of listening. His eyes are soft and frightened, like a child who broke their mother’s favorite bowl, with hands tight-clasped in his lap. The hurt is so strong on him that I have to hold my heart like Braan taught me, leash it to my breath with eyes closed, to sink roots into my self and stay there, hearing only the barest whispers. I’ve learned to let myself cry, but I don’t wish to now, Enasal need not see still more sorrow. Instead, I say the words that appear full-formed from out of the whispers. “Do you remember the summers with Samahl, when you sat by the lily-pond? He was never really angry with you, but he had no time to say it when his mother found you. He would have said that he was sorry, but you were too afraid to listen. He still remembers you.”

Enasal is like Cullen: he doesn’t cry, doesn’t scream or put his hands upon his face. He closes his eyes and bows his head, penitent. I fasten my heart more tightly to my breath as I sit up, reach out and put my right hand over his clutching ones, white-knuckled still in his lap.

More words arise. “Why would the Creators hate you? If they were really the parents of the People, they would want you to be happy, like real mothers and fathers do.” Something tells me to put my free hand on his left shoulder, so that his right brushes against my chest and our faces are not far.

He raises his eyes but not his head, his lips tight even as he speaks. “I don’t remember what it means to be happy.”

It moves through my body, warm-coiling, whispering under skin. But it doesn’t hurt me, and it won’t hurt him, it will help and so I grasp it for my own. “You can.” Our foreheads meet first, a gentle joining of blond bangs, and then lips link lightly, breath draws in, eyes thrown wide but I smile against his face. His hands unclasp, spread wide, then they come to my neck and cheeks, cradling them.

The hum of his heart becomes a hymn and hurt fades away, and underneath his cloak and tunic my fingers find flesh like earth under the sun in spring. Breath and breath become one wind that sweeps through the swaying grasses of sensation, and tongues touch, taste, sharing water. Pull back a pace to gasp and grin, and I see also his inward fire, flaring from ears to jaw. We reach and cloth comes loose, falling from us, and so we fall also, on our sides, our breasts pressed close and limbs winding.

We wiggle free from leggings, throw them thoughtlessly, and I let him lead, his licks lingering above my lungs that fill and empty deep as wells (Vhenan’ara). I offer myself unto his desire, my hands finding tousled hair and stroking as his lips part and he swallows me, my breath brought to groans. A wave of shudders washes over and the flowing flesh holds me there, then draws away and dances down the length like a painter’s brush. Quiet kisses by the base and the sweep of sweet shivers as he breathes heat across that place. “Yes,” to answer Enasal before questions can come. Once more the kiss upon me that opens and takes me fully, but now his eyes meet mine and they are as an ocean of longing unhidden. “Yes.”

His head draws back again, but mine he holds in the heat still. The tongue twirls twice around the twitching tip, then leaves, to lick once more, sliding down and further down until he reaches my ring. I let my legs loose and he grips each thigh to gently push them apart. A flicker across the ring and my body shudders, and then against it a push of wet warmth and my fingernails nip against my palms, my teeth trap my lip. Again, and I am moaning. Yet again: bright fire blazing in my blood. One of his hands reaches out, finds mine, each reading the rhythm of the other’s pulse by pressed fingers. The other hand reaches somewhere in the discarded clothes, finds a bottle there, fumbles frantically. Suddenly slick, his hand brushes against my leg, then gently taps where his tongue was. Flesh fills flesh, strange but softly slow, his head raising, his eyes gazing in mine with quiet care ( _is he pained? I must be tender_ ).

“ _Andaran atish’an_ ,” I whisper, grinning. His eyes widen and he sniggers in scandalized shock, then a subtler smile steals across his face. The finger retreats fully and then two are there, just as gentle as before. Slowly… And again, a third this time. Now withdrawn, and he licks me there, my teeth grinding as groans pass through them once more. “ _Ready,_ ” I choke.

A moment more with the bottle. Our hands still linked. His free one reaches down towards his own member ( _how it aches already_ ) as hips are brought forward. Legs hanging wide and pressed near my chest, his body bowed over mine. His head hangs and mine reaches, raises, and we meet lips once more as he _enters me_ we look at each one and eyes see twofold green to blue and blue to green we gasp as we sink slowly are filled fully our hearts hammer arms arcing around like roots on rocks _vhenan’ara ma sulahn’nehn_ a first thrust frees fire to flow from heart to voice crying out our mouths meet breath bursting _ar n’uth vhenan_ we pull pleasure, pushing it deep till waves wash newly crashing beneath sky and stone _lath elgara_ and thus we are filled with light bursting asunder there together as

time

ends

and begins once more.

We lie together that night, and he is purged of all his desperation as we talk of things that soar and dive through sky and deep. For tomorrow and the days to come I do not know, when Braan departs with Cassandra and the Chargers follow the Iron Bull to the coming contracts and Vivienne curses Victoria again and we will be parted forever until next we meet. For tomorrow and the days to come pull hearts apart and send them seeking where they must.

“Can compassion be kin to love?" Enasal whispers, touching my brow with trembling hands as we fade into the Fade.

“Let me be near to you, and I will be your help,” is my reply. “For now, that’s enough.”

And so I fall asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enasal dreams. Enasal's POV first person, addressed to Cole as the second person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt vaguely dissatisfied upon reviewing my work about Cole & Enasal, as I felt that Enasal's development felt incomplete and inadequate, considering the importance of his role as Cole's newfound lover. As such, I decided to fashion something that would allow me to go deeper into Enasal's psyche, to find a new path whereby he and Cole could find unison. I hope this will serve as a proper, though by no means exhaustive, exploration of the character I created, and of Cole (of course).

I'll come as a wandering stranger.

The breeze sets lindens to their petaled dance and bells upon their boughs give them voice. You pluck a blossom, consider it, then tuck it into your shirt. Here the earth is moss and grass fresh-sprouting, and so, though your feet are bare, I do not wince or worry. Beyond you, the forest breaks, and there a garden grows. You see me coming near and your face is lit with joy, but you do not approach--you wander on from tree to tree, hands slowly drifting along ancient bark. I see words tumbling from your lips in silence, and the leaves about you shudder with renascent language, though I can make no sense of it.

I go towards you undeterred, and as your fingertips lift from the trees, my own come to your waist. "Cole?" I murmur. "What are you doing in this place?" A sudden surge down through guts to loins. "I long for you..." and my other hand to your stomach, though gentle.

You look at me and your eyes glow with inner light. _Elgar_. My ardor dims. You say, "You followed me here. I followed myself. This part remembers me remembering. I have come here every night since I began to know sleep." You throw a hand wide and in its measure, all the rustling lindens. "They're waking up slowly, as long as I spend enough time with them each night."

My vision lurches. "I dream." My arms break into gooseflesh and I feel my body sway perilously.

Then your hand is at the back of my neck, rubbing firmly. "'Stay here, kid,'" in an eerily close imitation of the dwarf's speech. You're smiling again.

About me all hues grow brighter by tenfold, golden morning transforming into a glow of green. The sounds sharper: trees lushwhispering the birds proclaiming the lust of spring. "Then, if I dream, are you truly here with me?"

To which your hand drags down from my neck along my back and shivers roll across my limbs.

I have sought to tame the unattainable tongue, the heart whose reach exceeds the world. I have seen the arc of daylight's hallway. I have felt the damp breast of night upon mine. I apprehend all things set before me, and yet it is my heart that is the knower of the leaf-many multitudes. Who is this wanderer who crossed the verge of being, who dared to draw blood from his mother's womb? Whence came his longings, his will? To what end have they assembled?

To which you press your chest against my back, arms entwined, dreambreath upon my neck.

Bells of fey silver upon the rising gusts. I am pulled into their motion, and my boughs sway in sympathy to their joy. "They sang themselves into unity when I was but a spark," you whisper against my hair. "They know that this is home for me no more, yet still do they rejoice that we should be here. My sisters."

Though stripped of brotherhood as I have been, my heart does not tremble when you speak thus. Amidst these soaring woods I think my feet could leave earth, my troubles falling away as snow before a wind from the sea. Then your body draws away from mine and our fingers enmesh.

"Come."

This garden is impossible, for all things are in fullest bloom, and neither wormsbite nor withering touches even the slightest petal. I see valerian and comfrey and dill and mint and chamomile. As you approach, the breeze causes all the plants to dip before us, a bow in greeting. We walk amidst the rows, your free hand brushing along the herbs, and they shudder with delight in your wake.

"They came here in dream, healers from the forest villages. They found their favorites here because they wanted to." You pluck a sprig of mint and chew, your eyes inscrutable.

"Like Braan?" I find myself asking. Cold sweat wiped from my brow, his susurrous insistences as he pulled off old bandages and blasphemies of pain spilled from my lips.

"He found this place for me." Your faint chuckle. "My sisters asked him to bring me back. It took a long time..."

When I give your hand a gentle squeeze, you look at me and smile, but it is not desire that I see in your eyes. Rather, I behold a redoubling of that knowing, that gaze into the structures of my soul. For a moment, I fear that you are about to give my inner thoughts voice, but instead, your whisper is, "Here, I remember my lightness in the beginning, the timeless floating beyond memories, when I sang but one note, and my voice was always clear. Now I am changed, and yet, here we stand, amidst my echoes." Your hand comes to my neck, fingers beneath an ear.

In the haunted nights of my exile, I longed for my heart to fail me, for my limbs to go wildly spasming in seizures, for my life to be devoured by inexorable sickness, for I had come to fear both dawn and dusk with the dread of perdition. When the hand of Death closed about me, though, with flails and mud and shrieks, my lifehunger burst forth as a towering flame, forcing my endurance, my penance for the will to self-destruction. Who am I to bear it? To carry the weight of a life destroyed before it could be refashioned?

"I want to forget," I murmur.

Your hand goes up the back of my shirt, fingertips brushing over the scars there. Your lips quirk queerly, and I think I can see the faintest rising red in your cheeks. "I used to know how to do that. Varric taught me to remember, and now I can't just make things disappear anymore." Then you close your eyes and tilt your head back.

I start to speak, yet I see your lips again forming voiceless words, as if in recitation. Beneath the lids your eyes twitch and dart, and your hand in mine is slack. I presume to start speaking, but your body sags suddenly, and I must catch you in my arms. A moment of clawing panic in my heart, but your winter eyes open and crease with the hint of a smile, gazing upon me.

"Rosemary," you whisper. Then your smile appears in full, and you stand, though my arms are still about you. "Ah. Yes, you should understand... I asked this place to tell me what was needed, and for a moment I returned to where I was. Before." You scratch your chin and gaze downwards, though your free hand is upon my back. "I am here, Enasal."

I try not to make a display of my confusion, and instead gaze about me. A strange bird, kingfisher-blue yet raven-broad in wing, lets forth her voice and it trills with flute-song. Above, the sunlight shivers through a linden canopy and the dreamsky dances with clouds whose colors echo a dawn unending. The wind arises in my hair and I feel fingers running through, though their make is not of flesh. So I speak, and thus say, "Then it will help us?" I know not what else to do, so I pull you close and bury my face in the crook of neck and shoulder, praying that I never lose the scent of you.

"Yes." Then you chuckle at me, and its ripple is against my stomach. "But first, you will have to release me, _ma vhenan_."

I draw back, and cannot help but grin, though my gut twists slightly with shame. "Yes... I'm sorr--"

"Shh." One palm upon my cheek, and then you take my hand and lead me deeper into the garden. Here a hummingbird hangs hovering, there a bee bumps about a bloom. Intellect swims about us, the Beyond's beholding of our natures. And here the rosemary grows in towering impossibility, a maiden's form held by green breezeshifting stalks tall as men. She smiles as you dip your head and I hastily follow suit, but before I can think to utter a word, her shape comes undone and each leaf returns to a more earthly order.

I look to you, who seem faintly surprised, lips parted and eyes gleaming. "She said she would help," you sigh in relief from a worry that I had not seen. "She will take the troubles from you, turn them light and scatter them upon the winds of the Fade. It is for us to do the working, though." You turn to me, and your smile is crooked with shyness. "I never was a healer of bodies before, but... you'll have to take off your shirt."

How can I do anything but comply? for here I find my shelter in the arms of waking sleep. I unbutton it slowly, a faint shiver going down my back when I see you gazing intensely at my baring chest. But your stare is one of appraisal, not desire, and so I carry on. When the garment slips away, you turn and crouch by the great bush of rosemary, running palms over its needled greenery. I think I hear humming faintly, and it echoes the birdsong all about us. Then you pluck off a handlength from the plant, put it in your mouth, and chew. After a moment, you push it into one cheek, and say about it, "Come by me, and lie upon your stomach. Try to stay still."

The grass of the Beyond is soft like the fur of a halla-fawn and has neither ants nor snails, only the cool remembrance of an earlier dew. I lay myself by your side, head turned towards you. When I feel your fingers running over the scars upon my back, I grit my teeth against the sudden onslaught of memory. Shrieking multitudes the crumbling of dry mud from about my mouth the hysteria wheezing through my throat the thinbiting lightning of thorned branches "suffer not the maleficar to live" roars a bullnecked man "for he lies in fornication with all fiends imaginable" fingers closing about my neck the ragged teeth of treebark chewing my flesh as my body is thrown against what will become my gallows and yet yet yet I live the heavens sunder green flame pouring downwards bonds snapping my voice howling body falling then----Dale-songs and Hahren Lavellan's cooling fingers upon my brow.

I am shuddering, and you press a wad of chewed rosemary into a scar. "Stay near to me, Enasal," you whisper. "Let it take flight away from you." You hum again, and I feel the moist kiss of another lump, this upon my shoulders.

And again, and once more. I listen, trying to discern voice in the muttering leaves upon the wind. I think that I could grow calm here despite your hands upon the memories of horror. I wonder who first saw this grove and garden before you and I were brought forth into being, if the gods themselves ordained it into its present nature or if mortal minds had dreamed it as it dreamed them back.

Then at last you press one more bit of mush, and then let forth a hushed sigh. "That is enough. The spirits will do the rest, taking the weight of darkness from you." You fall back from a crouch, arse landing on the ground with a thump. You look down at me and your flaxen hair falls across your right eye, hiding and yet not. Then you stretch out a hand and place it upon my waist. Lowering yourself, outstretching on the ground beside me, you murmur, "Are you troubled still?"

I think. The streaking flame of the whiplash. I nod, and my eyes sting for a moment.

Upon my cheek you press your own and your eyes behold all the measures of a troubled life in but a moment, and I know this for you are from this domain that was a nurturing womb for the dawning of your nature. And now we come here not as children but in a fuller fashion, our souls rooted and entwined.

When your lips brush against my nose, I wonder which of us is truly the elder. Which was first fashioned and set to their course by divine command? There in my mouth, our lips opening and your tongue upon mine, is a language not of words but contented groans, and does it not predate my mortal speech? Upon the grasses our fingers find each other once more, and so the lindens sigh for us in calmed delight, their faces turning aside to give us a proper bower undisturbed. The wind is cool the sun warm here in the land all-changeable and now your arm is about my shoulder, hand upon my throat as lightly as a blade of grass. Then are we brought by fate to this design, or did we choose it long ago when our souls wore other garb? Are the two different?

I raise myself from the ground and you place yourself beneath me, so I may lower to rest gently upon breast and belly. Now we embrace and your legs wrap about my own, and though we are clothed, our loins speak to each the other in the speech of thirsting flesh. So my hungering lips fall upon your pale throat. So your hands wander down beneath my leggings and push them away, and they vanish, for this is the Beyond, and your fingers brush lightly beneath my member. A gasp from me and you grin to seize my lips with yours, as I reach and pull away your own thoughtraiment, which vanishes just as swiftly as did mine. For now the world turns about us and reflects the lakes of our souls and the birds sing all the more sweetly as I press your length against my own.

So are you my certainty. For where I am groaning, "Cole," your gentle breath upon my face. For where we throw our heads over each other's shoulders. For where we taste each other's sweat upon our lips. For where your hair falls back behind you and my bangs drag across your brow. Fire to fire we kindle and mingle. I am the sun and you the sky. I am the summer rains and you the land beneath. You are the stars and I the gazer. You are the valley and I the river. Then we are each the necessity for the other. So rises the dawning light within our skin. Rise. Rise.

Behold the zenith-lifted sun.

* * *

And that was when I woke.

And there was not a whisper from my memories to haunt me.

And you said, "It's time for us to go, the day has dawned already."

And I knew the inner sun would never set.

And I knew the wind would never die.

And every trunk and bough and leaf proclaimed in each its native tongue.

And I beheld the arc of daylight's hallway.

And I would sleep beneath the breast of night.

And all was as one song.

 


End file.
